Sextet, or Why I Daydream About Retirement

Yesterday I clocked out half a day early. I had been “playing with pain,” my right foot screaming that I either had a broken bone or a gout flareup. (A day and a gallon of water later, I’m pretty sure it’s a flareup.) But I have been doing a lot of sitting and lying around in the meanwhile, getting up to page 57 with MOBY DICK and watching LEGEND starring Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy; and I just finished SPOTLIGHT, this generation’s ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, right down to Ben Bradlee, Jr.

And I’ve been drawing and versifying as well. Paradoxically, extra time on my hands makes me realize I don’t have enough time on my hands. This is my third blog post of the day, but it could have easily been posts 3 through 8 . . .

Not all of these were done yesterday and today, but if I weren’t about to watch TRAINWRECK I’d tackle “The Dreary Business of Joke Analysis,” which I’ve been meaning to write for some time. And I still feel like doodling, and more often than not I’ll get more post-ideas from the doodles. And I just bought some brushes with which to paint on canvas paper . . .

When I retire–and I will qualify for Social Security less than five months from now–I want to devote the time I’ve spent as a wage slave to these creative efforts. I want to review the 900-plus posts I’ve made and make salon-sized paintings based on the best 25 of them. I want to sculpt again, and make pottery, and write a retirement-community novel, and a restaurant novel, and a going-traveling memoir . . .

Twenty years more, dear Beneficent Universe–that’s all I ask . . .